Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Philip Boehm

4/5 stars

What's it about? I don’t quite know how to describe Malina: a love story, a rallying cry against fascism and patriarchy, a collage, an excavation of language’s limitations. Or, a writer loves Malina, her live-in partner, and Ivan, a chance encounter that became an affair, and navigates the discontent created by history and violent men. It’s an exhilarating ride.

How’d I find it? This was the most recent book club pick at the excellently curated Lost Avenue Books. Given the last question, you can imagine the lively discussion.

Who will enjoy this book? If you dug Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, you’ll want to read this.

What stood out? I admit, I was not won over by the first section of the novel, “Happy with Ivan,” in which the narrator moons over a younger man who lives a few doors down. The section part, “The Third Man,” changed my mind, launching a sequence of delirious dreams about the narrator’s father intercut with conversations with Malina. These pages are brutal, overwhelming, and intense, and Malina morphs into a threat, a malevolent presence. Bachmann evokes deportation, incest, war, rape, and sexism in raw, surreal ways. I couldn’t put it down.

Which line made me feel something? In a section formatted as a local paper’s interview with the writer: “I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression.”

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes

4/5 stars

What's it about? Anna and Tom are young expats in Berlin, proud of the life they’ve created until they suddenly…aren’t. A searing commentary on modern, work-from-home culture.

How’d I find it? The team at Solid State Books thought I would like this one, and, as always, they were right.

Who will enjoy this book? Millennial freelancers and account execs, this will hit close to home.

What stood out? Latronico has crafted a novel that captures the past ten years like no other I’ve read. The fixation on ambition, codependence in partnership, the meaningless markers of contentment—all utterly contemporary as Anna and Tom sink into their feeds and gentrify their neighborhood. Who needs dialogue when you’ve got grade A malaise?

Which line made me feel something? While the chapter in which Anna and Tom delve into activism certainly feels the most cringeworthy, this description of screen addiction horrified me: “It was like walking through the world’s most hectic street market on cocaine. It was like channel-hopping an entire wall of TV sets. It was like telepathically tuning into the thoughts of a stadium packed with people. But really it wasn’t like anything else, because it was new.”

Waiting for the Fear by Oguz Atay, translated by Ralph Hubbell

3/5 stars

What's it about? In this eerie collection, the stories of Turkish writer Oguz Atay catch folks in disturbing situations, such as discovering the desiccated body of an ex in the attic or receiving a threat in an alien language.

How’d I find it? I must credit the NYRB Classics Book Club for this find.

Who will enjoy this book? If you like the stories of Samanta Schweblin or Anna Kavan, Waiting for the Fear will be right up your alley.

What stood out? Atay favors an imperious tone that brightens these dark tales. The speakers and protagonists of the stories in Waiting for the Fear react to strangeness in manic and paranoid ways. Take, for example, the advice columnist of “Not Yes Not No” who composes a deranged reply to a lovelorn man lacking in letter writing skills: “How can someone so pitiful feel such self-confidence?”

Which line made me feel something? From the title story: “The moon incident had gotten me thinking that I used to dislike nature, but now I wondered if I’d always sort of liked it. I wondered if at some point, because of the trees, the grass or insects that can’t fly, I’d begun in fact to love it.”

Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich, translated by Howard Curtis

3/5 stars

What's it about? Leo Gazarra, perpetually drunk, aimless, remembers at the end of a terrible day that it’s his thirtieth birthday. Thus begins his affair with the unpredictable Arianna. A melancholic novel that makes of Rome an indifferent mistress.

How’d I find it? The staff recommendations shelf at Powell’s has the goods.

Who will enjoy this book? As André Aciman’s introduction to this edition aptly observes, Last Summer in the City is an ideal companion read for Fellini’s La Dolce Vita or Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty. In terms of tone, think Catcher in the Rye in the style of Bret Easton Ellis.

What stood out? A former resident of Rome, I relished following Leo around the city, meeting folks at the Spanish steps, having far too many drinks at a piazza trattorias, and lazily peering into shop windows. Rome seems to hit people in a particular way, and the characters of this novel all want to escape, burdened by the city’s history and their need for frivolity. Everyone, it would seem, is “at the end of their tether.” Calligarich captures that feeling, and Last Summer in the City marinates in futility, culminating in a last act that ramps up the melodrama. Leo, for his part, knows how to find relief: he takes to the sea.

Which line made me feel something? Leo’s best friend, Graziano, kept me smiling: “We found ourselves in a cloister enclosed by columns carved from boulders. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘More rocks.’”

The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran, translated by Gene Png

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? Aside from the hot pink cover, I was drawn to the prospect of a vampire tale and the hospital as hunting ground.

Why not 3 or more stars? Detective Su-Yeon investigates a spree of suicides among a hospital’s older patients and encounters Violette, a vampire-hunter who suspects foul play. The Midnight Shift toggles between Su-Yeon’s story and the struggles of one of the hospital’s nurses, while doling out Violette’s back story in fragments. Though entertaining, the novel lacks in vampire lore to round out the narrative, and our characters remain one-dimensional to a conclusion befitting of the CW.

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith

4/5 stars

What's it about? This vivid and human account of the Nazi occupation of France is made all the more potent by the fact of the novel’s publication long after the author’s death at Auschwitz.

How’d I find it? Suite Française appears on “best of” lists, and I had to check it out.

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Kristin Hannah’s work and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See should like this one.

What stood out? Suite Française collects two of a planned five-part series unfinished by Némirovsky; the work she was able to complete captures war in the intimate details of individuals trying to survive. The edition I read concludes with Némirovsy’s notes on the project, as well as heartbreaking correspondence that describes her deportation and disappearance.

Which line made me feel something? “Yet this music, the sound of this rain on the windows, the great mournful creaking of the cedar tree in the garden outside, this moment, so tender, so strange in the middle of war, this will never change, not this.”

Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro, translated by Eve Hill-Agnus

5/5 stars

What's it about? An accomplished ship captain impulsively allows her crew to swim in the sea, and everything that comes after goes awry. Most concerning: the voyage started with twenty sailors—now there are twenty-one. An eerie page-turner.

How’d I find it? I picked up a few titles from a display of short reads at Powell’s, and all have been bangers. Admittedly, this cover played no small role in my purchase.

Who will enjoy this book? The disjointed narrative and dreamy prose of Ultramarine recall Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea.

What stood out? Mariette Navarro knows what she’s doing. The shifting realities of Ultramarine keep the reader tense, but the siren effect of its atmospheric language make the discomfort worthwhile. That uneasiness lingers, even though the book is brief and can be consumed in one captivated sitting. The ocean is very scary.

Which line made me feel something? A representative example of Navarro’s beautiful writing: “They’ve left the sounds of the earth and of the surface: they discover the music of their own blood, a drumming to the point of jubilation, percussion that could lead them to a trance. Dark sound of held breaths, symphony of lightness.”

Overstaying by Ariane Koch, translated by Damion Searls

4/5 stars

What's it about? The narrator lives in her childhood home alone and can’t quite rouse herself to leave the small town where she grew up. She becomes fascinated by a visitor and invites him to stay, and before long the visitor consumes her whole existence. Funny, trippy, and endlessly strange.

How’d I find it? I love this influencer for translated book recs. She knows what’s up.

Who will enjoy this book? Overstaying embraces absurdity and tension in the manner of Samanta Schweblin. In fact, the fluidity of interiors reminds me of Seven Empty Houses.

What stood out? The narrator’s sense of humor makes this bizarre tale more fun than creepy, quite a feat when the visitor with his furry “brushfingers” mutates and evolves the longer he lingers. Overstaying fills inertia with small horrors (how I loved the sentient vacuum cleaners) and completes its sense of claustrophobia with short, choppy chapters. Koch pulls off an immersive mirage of a book.

Which line made me feel something? This tidbit had me laughing out loud: “It’s all the same to me whether or not he’s planning to poison the neighbor children. They’re all right, because they’re small, but then again they’re not that small; now that I think about it, they have chubby thighs.”

Sun City by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal

3/5 stars

What's it about? The residents of the Berkeley Arms in St. Petersburg, Florida squabble, fret, and weather the realities of aging and retirement in this trim, breezy novel.

How’d I find it? This came in the mail as the monthly selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club.

Who will enjoy this book? Sun City tackles the humor and distress of older adulthood à la Helene Tursten (without the murder).

What stood out? The novel shifts between the perspectives of its many characters, lending depth to the daily humdrum of life. I was particularly drawn to the formidable Mrs. Rubinstein, whose sharp tongue and sway over her retirement community make her a delight to accompany, and Linda, an adored employee of the Berkeley Arms whose boyfriend impatiently awaits the next coming of Jesus.

Which line made me feel something? “Afterward, Miss Frey thought she had been lost, but sometimes even then she would secretly indulge a wonder and a daydream that had to do with the beauty of emptiness and extinction.”

The Suicides by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? I mention the NYRB Classics Book Club enough for it to be the obvious source.

Why not 3 or more stars? A reporter investigates a story on the nature of suicide, haunted by the realization that he’s approaching the same age at which his father took his own life. Written in 1969, this circular and dark novel proves to be a tough read thanks to the narrator’s constant mistreatment of women and generally obnoxious company. Photographer Marcela offers an interesting foil, and I would have preferred to read a whole book about her.